Tom Brady Called JPMorgan's CEO To Cheer Him Up After Huge Loss

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon had a rough summer to say the least. Dimon had to deal with the fallout from the London Whale trading loss, a $6 billion hit JPMorgan first announced in May 2012.

In a fascinating profile of Dimon in November's issue of Vanity Fair, Dimon reveals that after explaining his company's huge loss to analysts and the media on July 13, he got a call from Tom Brady. The New England quarterback was calling to console Dimon after one of the worst days of his life.

In first announcing the trading losses, at a hastily convened conference call for analysts and the media on May 10, Dimon knew he would get skewered. “It plays right into the hands of a bunch of pundits out there,” he said at the time. “But that’s life…. We have egg on our face. We deserve any criticism we get.” After spending much of July 13 again explaining the trading loss to the media and to research analysts -- including making the stunning admission that the traders in London may have intentionally mismarked the trades to make them look less egregious, a potential illegality that the Justice Department is still investigating -- the exhausted Dimon got an unexpected call from Tom Brady, the star quarterback of the New England Patriots. (Jimmy Lee, a legendary sports fan, had arranged for it.) Brady reminded Dimon that even Super Bowl champs have bad days and told him “to hang in there.” “I was surprised he even knew who I was, to tell you the truth,” Dimon says.

This isn't the only instance that Brady has offered support to a high-profile man who had suffered a serious setback. In the lead-up to this weekend's showdown between Brady and Peyton Manning, the Denver Broncos quarterback revealed that Brady reached out to him as he recovered from neck surgery last year and asked if there was anything he could do to help.